Fuelling public service corruption with unpaid retirees benefits

Retirement, which in other parts of the world is usually a phase of life with a sense of contentment and happiness, is a nightmare in Nigeria. Public service employees of the states retire without payment of pensions and gratuities for a decade. Many have fallen and died in the endless queues while doing some verification and documentation to pay their entitlements. The abuse, across the 36 states of the federation, does not only affect pensioners, but thousands of their relatives and dependents. As a result, many lives and dreams have been completely ruined.

Negligence has reached a new level with the judges now entering the abominable league, thus the issue was on the agenda of the last meeting of the National Judicial Council (NJC) chaired by Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) Olukayode Ariwoola. States pay the salaries of retired judges, and the NJC oversees the payment of their salaries while they are in service. The NJC has chastised state governments for non-payment of judges’ benefits, stressing that it “undermines the Rule of Law and Article 6 of the Constitution”. As a result, he directed the Chief Justices of the States to submit reports on the compliance of the payments by the states before April 1. Addressing it has become an urgent matter of national importance.

On May 1st, at appropriate times like Workers’ Day, these senior citizens who have spent 35 years of their lives in active service to the nation and are largely in frail health, demonstrate in front of Government Houses and other places. Draw people’s attention to their plight and pay for their rights. Unfortunately, most of the time, they are sardonically ignored by those who have a duty to care for them, as happened last year in a state in the south of the country, where the governor said they were politically irrelevant.

In the South West, the Nigerian Union of Pensioners (NUP) in the zone said that as of November 2022, N330 billion in pensions and gratuities were owed to its members. The delay extends to 2012. The spokesman of the union, Olusegun Abatan, who disclosed this at the end of their recent meeting in Ibadan, said Osun State is the biggest debtor in rights owed at N145 billion; Well, at N58 million; Ogun, N55 billion; Ekiti, N40,000 billion; Oyo, on the other hand, owed pensioners N43,000 billion.

Concerned Abia Pensioners, in the protest of April 22, 2022, stated that the delay in pensions is 38 months, while the gratuities had been accumulated for 20 years. One of the protesters, Emeka Okezie, pleaded: “We are asking the government to help us before we all die.” Workers in Rivers State, during the 2022 May Day demonstration, wore black to mourn their deceased retired colleagues. The situation was so dire that the Rivers State President of the Nigeria Labor Congress (NLC), Mrs. Beatrice Ituba, lamented that the number of obituaries at the office of the pensioners union will make anyone cry.

In Kano State, the Chairman of the NLC, Kabir Ado Minjibir, said that since January 2021, over N3,000 billion had been withdrawn from the meager monthly pension of retirees. Government House, for the delay of gratuities due, together with pension deductions and non-harmonisations. In the same month, pensioners from Taraba State Local Governments marched to the State House of Assembly to demand a 10-year delay in the payment of their pensions and gratuities. The chairman of the group, Yohanna Ajiya, condemned the death of many retirees due to their meager existence. It’s a never-ending cocktail of misfortune!

Some may say that lack of funds is responsible for the crisis. But the looting of the public treasury, the misappropriation of funds and the obscene and luxurious lifestyles of elected and appointed public officials make this logic easy. It further undermines the fact that despite the revenue gains for the nine oil producing states of the Niger Delta, they are embroiled in a pension mess. Presidential spokesman Garba Shehu recently revealed that the affected states received N625.43 billion from the 13% oil derivation and other funds withheld by previous administrations. However, about N860.59 billion are outstanding.

Indeed, the plight of pensioners in Rivers State mitigates the issue. Governor Nyesom Wike, who blew the lid off the bonanza, only recalled their case when he joined his party’s presidential ticket by mid-2022. Ijeoma Samuel, the Director General of the Rivers State Pension Commission, on a payment guideline stated: “We don’t want a situation where someone who retired in 2020 will be paid before someone who retired in 2014 (where). They have adopted the principle of first to retire, first to pay.” More than 4,000 retirees are in the batch of 2014. With the high speed of the process, as seen on the first day, when the payment of each batch would be completed, it is better to imagine before moving on to the 2020 cohort.

In a country with no social security or welfare policies that cater to the elderly, the lack of interest in paying benefits to pensioners is disingenuous and inhumane in the extreme. Those still in the service who watch with amazement how their former colleagues live in utter deprivation, hunger, ill health, hopelessness and abandonment will derive a perverse incentive from illness. They will immerse themselves in the miasma of corruption in order to earn enough money for their old age, and in this way they will make the initiative for ethnic revival in the public service, an expression of the anti-graft campaign. Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Offenses Commission (ICPC), pure shadow boxing.

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It was a post-retirement lament when the Pension Reform Act of 2004 came into force and was amended in 2014. It foresees a contributory pension scheme for workers and employers, and only exempted workers with less than four years until retirement. Unfortunately, only a few states have signed up to the system, which is a bad development that indicates that the current challenge will not be exorcised anytime soon.

It is a social policy wash that state governors should quickly address. It stands for equity, social justice and human rights. To resolve the situation of ex-judges, the NJC can take over the payment of their pensions through a tailored funding policy; organized workers, on the other hand, should re-strategize to make things happen for their former colleagues. They deserve to live! Ironically, while retirement is dreaded in Nigeria, early to middle age retirees in the UK are being lured back to work by Rishi Sunak as the government pushes back to work with a host of incentives to rescue the economy.

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Concerned by the paradox of neglecting pensioners, but not only offering very generous pension packages after only eight years in office, SERAP, in July 2022, sued state governors over the funds they were budgeting for their predecessors. position, instead of being a beneficiary in due course. Over N40,000 billion has been paid to 47 former governors in 21 states, who are also the recipients of their home state palaces, and in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, to launch fleets of cars and domestic workers that are replaced every four years. This is simply unfair.

Such gross display of inequality and obscene appropriation of public funds by a few will continue to cause social convulsions in Nigerian society. It is therefore not surprising that the 2020 Global Pension Alliance Report ranked Nigeria 64 out of 70 countries for the shortcomings of its pension system.